A month I’m glad to see the back of
SOMETHING quite profound dawned on me the other day. I think I hate August. Yes, it’s a summer month and, yes, it’s the month we all go on holiday and, yes, it’s the season that brings us agricultural shows, village fetes and flower festivals, but I think those are the very reasons I’ve built up such a contempt for it.
As a journalist, August is quite a slog. There are very few council meetings, and council meetings are a great source of stories. Add to that the fact everyone’s on holiday, and it makes everything unusually quiet. Journalists don’t like it when it’s quiet.
Press offices are short staffed throughout August, business stories are hard to come by, clubs and societies all shut up shop, and we don’t hear a peep from the schools.
Having said that, August is the month GCSES and A-levels are announced. And while I take a lot of joy in reporting on exam results because I get shoved towards pupils with smiling faces for my interviews, and interviewing happy people is always fun, numbers aren’t my strong suit. And getting my head around the various complex statistics I need to understand to compile a feature on an everchanging and hideously complicated marking system usually wears me out by the end of the morning. Ashbourne Show happens in August. And it’s one of my favourite events of the year, I absolutely love covering it.
But, as soon as I get home from the showground the hard work begins. I have to input all the results I’ve been given for the Burton Mail’s sister title, the Ashbourne News Telegraph. Many of them still come hand-written and even those that do come via email need hours of formatting.
I usually clock up 8,000 words of typing to get the results into the four pages we set aside and it takes around 10 hours. It’s quite a slog.
Of course, August should be a month of enjoying summer weather, and spending long days outside in the sunshine. Only, pretty much every August over the past 20 years has been horrid. It’s as if, as soon as the schools break up, the season shifts into its wet, windy and miserable phase. It’s one of the reasons the wife and I never go on holiday in August.
Another reason we don’t go away during the month is because everywhere is maddeningly busy. I made the mistake of heading to Dovedale the other day and it was crazy. It took me nearly 20 minutes to find a parking space and, by the time I got to the stepping stones, I was so sick of the crowds I just turned around and went back, wondering all the way why on earth I’d bothered.
It’s also the month when we start to notice the summer dying out and we get our first miserable sniff of autumn air. Meteorologically speaking, summer ends on the last day of August and it’s certainly felt that way of late. The days are noticeably shorter, the nights are colder, and I even had to get my big coat out the other day to walk the dogs.
And then August finally coughs its last with a bank holiday. I hate bank holidays because everywhere is busier than ever, I have to work, and it’s impossible to get any stories done as nobody else is at work to give me comments and statements.
Wednesday last week saw September finally begin. It was a pretty uneventful day, with light drizzle in the air through the morning, a grey cloudy afternoon, and there was nothing on telly in the evening. But I was in a fantastic mood all day. I’m not a fan of autumn at all, but I’m so glad to see the back of August.
Now there’s just one more season to go until everything gets better. In just three months’ time the days will get longer, the temperatures will be climbing again and the gradual decline into winter will finally start to reverse. Spring will be here soon enough.
Now, that’s a level of optimism I’d never have shown in August. I’m usually far too miserable to look on the bright side.
Pretty much every August over the past 20 years has been horrid... the season shifts into its wet, windy and miserable phase